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Abandoned mines › Kentucky
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Hancock County, Kentucky

Hancock County, Kentucky has 38 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1934–1980. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 11 problems in the county, 8 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 30 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Hancock County, every OSMRE abandoned mine land problem in the county, and every MSHA-registered mine here with status Abandoned. Named features are listed below; unnamed ones are counted by type. Locations are deliberately not shown: this page says what abandoned workings are in the county, not where to find them. They are dangerous and should not be entered.

Mapped mine features (USGS)
38
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
8
MSHA mines marked abandoned
30
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits4 quadrangle maps, published 1934–1980 11 OSMRE problems, 3 reclaimed 0 MSHA mines abandoned and sealed
What the features are
  1. Mine openings
    shafts, adits, air shafts, portals and vertical openings: the ways into underground workings
    1 2.0%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    37 75.5%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    1 2.0%
  4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    1 2.0%
  5. Mills, tipples and facilities
    processing plants and hazardous structures
    1 2.0%
  6. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    8 16.3%
OSMRE abandoned mine land problems11 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Blackford Church Mines P2 Clogged Stream Lands Reclamation Pending
Blackford Creek Mine P2 Clogged Stream Lands Reclamation Pending
Caney Creek Mines P2 Clogged Stream Lands Reclamation Completed
Caney Creek Mines P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Pending
Driskell Branch Spoil P2 Clogged Stream Lands Reclamation Pending
Indian Lake Road Subsidence P1 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Little Yellow Ck L. R. Chapman Bf P3 Bench Reclamation Pending
Little Yellow Ck L. R. Chapman Bf P3 Haul Road Reclamation Pending
Little Yellow Ck L. R. Chapman Bf P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Pending
Little Yellow Creek Mine P2 Clogged Stream Lands Reclamation Pending
Neil Goodman Subsidence P1 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed

Problem types carry OSMRE's priority prefix: P1 and P2 are threats to health, safety and property, P3 is environmental. A problem area is a cluster of problems reclaimed as one project; several rows can share one location.

MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned30 on register
  1. American Olean Tile Company Subsidi
    Facility metal/non-metal · American Olean Tile · MSHA ID 1504664
    Abandoned
  2. American Olean Tile Track No 2
    Surface metal/non-metal · L R Chapman Inc · MSHA ID 1504663
    Abandoned
  3. American Olean Tile Tract No 4
    Surface metal/non-metal · L R Chapman Inc · MSHA ID 1512200
    Abandoned
  4. Blackford Surface Mine #1
    Surface coal · Bluegrass Mining · MSHA ID 1512374
    Abandoned
  5. Bluegrass 10-14 Surface
    Surface coal · Bluegrass Mining · MSHA ID 1512643
    Abandoned
  6. Church Mine
    Surface coal · Green Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 1512838
    Abandoned
  7. Conway Strip
    Surface coal · Conway Coal Company · MSHA ID 1512732
    Abandoned
  8. Greer Mine
    Surface coal · Zellers Construction Company · MSHA ID 1508230
    Abandoned
  9. Hamco Strip
    Surface coal · Pennyrile Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 1510342
    Abandoned
  10. Hawesville Pit
    Surface coal · Circle B Coal Company · MSHA ID 1509924
    Abandoned
  11. Hawesville-69 Surface
    Surface coal · Kelco Inc · MSHA ID 1511792
    Abandoned
  12. Indicoal Surface
    Surface coal · Indicoal Company · MSHA ID 1511294
    Abandoned
  13. L R Chapman Inc Can-Tex Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Can-Tex Industries · MSHA ID 1500174
    Abandoned
  14. L R Chapman Inc Owensboro Brick Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Owensboro Brick & Tile Company Inc · MSHA ID 1500190
    Abandoned
  15. L R Chapman Mine No 2
    Surface coal · L R Chapman Inc · MSHA ID 1503875
    Abandoned
  16. L. R. Chapman Pits
    Surface metal/non-metal · L. R. Chapman, Inc. · MSHA ID 1518557
    Abandoned
  17. Lead Creek Strip
    Surface coal · Lead Creek Mining Company · MSHA ID 1510905
    Abandoned
  18. Marsh 846-0003
    Surface coal · Cravat Coal Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 1514391
    Abandoned
  19. No 1 Strip
    Surface coal · Hamco Coal Company · MSHA ID 1509744
    Abandoned
  20. No 11 Dredge
    Surface metal/non-metal · Evansville Materials Inc · MSHA ID 1514952
    Abandoned
  21. No 8 Dredge
    Surface metal/non-metal · Evansville Materials Inc · MSHA ID 1507118
    Abandoned
  22. O K C Strip
    Surface coal · Patrick D Price Petroleum Products Inc · MSHA ID 1510887
    Abandoned
  23. Pit No 1
    Surface coal · L R Chapman Inc · MSHA ID 1507766
    Abandoned
  24. Powers Pit No 1
    Surface coal · Earle Mining Joint Venture · MSHA ID 1511350
    Abandoned
  25. Swihart Property
    Surface coal · Cravat Coal Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 1514390
    Abandoned
  26. Three County Mine
    Surface coal · Trois Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 1512477
    Abandoned
  27. Warm Glow Cannel Mine
    Surface coal · Richards Coal Company · MSHA ID 1512061
    Abandoned
  28. Warm Glow Strip
    Surface coal · East Kentucky Cannel Coal Inc · MSHA ID 1510838
    Abandoned
  29. West Star Strip
    Surface coal · West Star Coal Company · MSHA ID 1506873
    Abandoned
  30. Yellow Creek Mine
    Surface coal · Tdc Inc · MSHA ID 1512375
    Abandoned

Status and date are as reported to MSHA by the operator. Each mine's own page carries its accident, citation and inspection record.

By source vocabularythe publishers' own terms
Feature type Features
Strip Mine 29
P2 Clogged Stream Lands 5
Strip Mine 4
Disturbed Surface 3
P1 Vertical Openings 1
P3 Spoil Area 1
P3 Haul Road 1
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 1
P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities 1
P1 Subsidence 1
Sand and Gravel Pit 1
P3 Bench 1
Other counties in KentuckyAll counties →
How to read these numbers

A USGS feature is a symbol on a historical topographic map, there when the map was surveyed; it may since have been sealed, reclaimed, built over or reopened as a working mine, and the map does not say which. An OSMRE row is a problem the abandoned mine land program tracks, not a mine. An MSHA mine is a registered operation whose operator reported abandonment, a record that starts in the 1970s. The three overlap and are never added together. The county is assigned from each feature's coordinates against the Census 2023 county boundaries. The full method is on the national page.

Sources
  1. USGS, Consolidated Prospect- and Mine-Related Features from 7.5- and 15-Minute Topographic Quadrangle Maps of the United States (USMIN)
    597,612 point and area features digitized from about 106,350 historical topographic maps published 1886–2006; public domain (CC0). A feature is a map symbol, not a field-verified site, and the map does not say whether it was still worked.
  2. USGS Fact Sheet 2025–3003, The Abandoned Mine Inventory of the United States
    States that as of 2025 there is no comprehensive national inventory of abandoned mine features, and that the detailed national database now being built will not be published.
  3. OSMRE, Abandoned Mine Land Inventory System (e-AMLIS), public Problems layer
    One row per abandoned mine land problem in a problem area, with its type, funding program and reclamation status; mostly coal mined before the 1977 Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act. Coordinates are the problem area's.
  4. MSHA, Mines dataset (Mine Data Retrieval System)
    Every mine registered with MSHA since the 1970s; a mine reads Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed when its operator reported that status. Refreshed weekly.
  5. US Census Bureau, 2023 cartographic county boundaries (1:500,000)
    Each feature's county is assigned by its coordinates against these boundaries, not copied from the source file.
  6. GAO-20-238, Abandoned Hardrock Mines (March 2020)
    Federal agencies had identified at least 140,000 abandoned hardrock mine features on federal land and estimated more than 390,000 more not yet captured in their databases.
  7. Abandoned Hardrock Mine Reclamation (AHMR) Program, US Department of the Interior
    The program the USGS inventory is compiled for. Its appropriations and the 674,000 field-confirmed feature count on this page were provided by the program manager, Office of Environmental Policy and Compliance, and are cited with permission (2026-09-08).
  8. IMCC-NAAMLP Hardrock AML Report
    Page 48 carries the two figures this page leans on: USGS estimates 633,181 of the 725,690 mine features it recorded from historic topographic maps, 87 percent, are hardrock; and state and federal agencies have submitted more than 724,000 AML features to the national database being built, already more than the historic maps hold. Year-by-year AHMR funding is on page 35.